Short URL for this page:
bit.ly/deExilioE


[image ALT: Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]
mail:
Bill Thayer

[image ALT: Click here for the text in ancient Greek.]
Ἑλληνική

[image ALT: Cliccare qui per una pagina di aiuto in Italiano.]
Italiano

[Link to a series of help pages]
Help
[Link to the next level up]
Up
[Link to my homepage]
Home

This webpage reproduces the
On Exile

by
Plutarch

as published in Vol. VII
of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1959

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

(Vol. VII) Plutarch, Moralia

 p513  On Exile

Copyright

The work appears in pp513‑571 of Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library's edition of the Moralia, first published in 1959. The Greek text and the English translation (by Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson) are now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U. S. Copyright Code, since the copyright expired in 1987 and was not renewed at the appropriate time, which would have been that year or the year before. (Details here on the copyright law involved.)

Loeb Edition Introduction

The essay is evidently addressed to an exile from Sardis (cf. 600A, 601B), probably at the moment in Athens (cf. 604C, 607E), who has been plausibly identified with the Menemachus of Sardis for whom Plutarch wrote the essay Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae.​1 Plutarch does not state the terms of exile, except to say that his friend was not banished to one specified area, but could travel freely so long as he did not return home (cf. 604B).​2

There is no evidence, internal or external, which makes possible a precise dating of the essay. The reference to Sunium, Taenarus, and the Ceraunian mountains as the limits of continental Greece (601A) may mean that the essay was written at a time when Epeirus, at least in part, was still included in the province of Achaia; but this gives little help, since it is not known when Epeirus was established as a  p514 separate province.​3 Again, as the very similar words in the Life of Phocion (754F) show, Plutarch may here be taking over an expression from some earlier author. Nor does the remark in 605B help to fix the date of the work. Throughout the period of Plutarch's literary activity there were many prominent figures — such men as Martial, Quintilian, Juvenal, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Musonius, and Favorinus — who lived for many years away from their native lands. Seneca says that in his time a large part of the persons living in any given city came from elsewhere.​4

The identification of Plutarch's exiled friend with Menemachus of Sardis has some bearing on the date of the essay. If this identification is correct, it was written some time after the Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae, which refers to Domitian in a way that suggests that his reign had recently ended: ἔναγχος ἐπὶ Δομετιανοῦ (815D). Hence the essay must have been written after the death of Domitian in A.D. 96.

Plutarch has employed in this essay many of the conventional topics which occur also in the consolations on exile written by Teles, Musonius, Seneca, and others.​5 A. Giesecke, who made a study of  p515 ancient writings on exile,​6 found that the similarities between Plutarch, Musonius, and Teles are especially conspicuous. He concluded that Bion and Ariston of Chios must have provided a common source for these writers.​7 Subsequently, B. Häsler made a comparative study of consolatory topics in connexion with the recently discovered work of Favorinus on exile.​8

In the initial exhortation to a rational attitude toward exile, Plutarch asserts that the evil of exile lies in opinion only (599D, 600D),​9 but that, even assuming that exile is itself an evil, we can abate it by diluting it with the good still remaining to us, as wealth (601F, 602A, 604B),​10 friends, and leisure.

The second main division of the De Exilio proceeds from the statement that "no native land is such by nature" (600E). Plutarch then develops the common theme that the whole universe is our native land. The consequence that he draws from this, however, is not that the particular place where he has to be is a matter of no importance to a wise man,​11 but rather that the exile would do well to choose for  p516 himself the best spot he can find, and in time it will become his native land (602C).

In the following discussion of places of exile Plutarch praises at some length the islands of the Aegean. That he is still thinking primarily of external goods is abundantly clear from his portrayal of life on an island (603E). The advantages of exile are further supported by the example of the many great men who voluntarily departed from home (604D ff.).​12

The fourth major division of Plutarch's essay is a refutation of certain charges commonly brought against exile. This division contains many topics in common with the Cynic-Stoic consolations. Plutarch first answers the charges Euripides brings against exile in the Phoenissae, a work which was also attacked by Favorinus and Musonius.​13 He also quotes apophthegms of the two famous Cynics, Diogenes and Antisthenes (606B, 607B).​14 Toward the end of this section he mentions several mythological instances of exile, and an allusion to the exile of Apollo provides a transition to the Empedoclean teaching that human life on earth is an exile from heaven (607C). The conclusion of the essay is Platonic in character, containing allusions to the Phaedrus, the Timaeus, and the Phaedo (607E‑F).

Thus the De Exilio does not have the severity of the Cynic doctrine, but rather combines in Plutarch's typical manner acceptance of the good things of this life with expectation of a better life to come. Plutarch uses the commonplaces of popular philosophy to  p517 develop his theme, but imposes on them his own distinctive outlook on life.

One translation can be added to those already listed.​15 The essay is No. 101 in the catalogue of Lamprias.

The text rests on vwβ2α. Occasionally AEγπn are cited.

 p519  (599) 1 1   [link to original Greek text] As it is with our friends, so it is with the words we speak: best and most to be depended upon, we are told, are those which appear in adversity to some purpose and give help; Bfor many people visit the unfortunate and talk to them, but their efforts do no good, or rather do harm. These people are like men unable to swim who try to rescue the drowning — they hug them close and help to drag them under. The language addressed to us by friends and real helpers should mitigate, not vindicate, what distresses us;​16 it is not partners in tears and lamentation, like tragic choruses, that we need in unwished-for circumstances, but men who speak frankly and instruct us that grief and self-abasement are everywhere futile, that to indulge in them is unwarranted and unwise, Cand that where the facts themselves, when reason has groped them out and brought them to light, enable a man to say to himself

You've not been hurt, unless you so pretend,​17

it is utterly absurd not to ask the body what it has suffered, or the soul whether it is the worse for this  p521 mischance,​18 but instead to seek instruction in grief from those who come from the outside world to join their vexation and resentment to our own.19

2 1   [link to original Greek text] Let us, therefore, withdraw from the world and taking our calamities one by one examine their weight, as if they were so many loads; for while the burden felt by the body is the actual weight of the thing that presses upon it, Dthe soul often adds the heaviness to circumstances from itself. It is by nature that stone is hard, it is by nature that ice is cold; it is not from outside themselves, fortuitously, that they convey the sensation of rigidity and freezing; but banishment, loss of fame, and loss of honours, like their opposites, crowns, public office, and front-seat privileges, whose measure of causing sorrow and joy is not their own nature, but our judgement, every one makes light or heavy for himself, and easy to bear or the reverse.​20 We can listen on the one hand to Polyneices, when, on being asked

EWhat is the loss of country? A great ill?

he replies

The greatest; and no words can do it justice;​21

on the other hand, we can hear what Alcman has to say, as the author of the little epigram has represented  p523 him:

Sardis, of old the sojourn of my sires,

Had I been bred in thee, then had I been

Some priest or temple eunuch, tricked in gold,

Smiting the painted timbrels; now instead

My name is Alcman,​22 and my country Sparta,

City of many tripods; I have been taught

The Hellenic Muses, who have raised me high

Above the despots Dascyles and Gyges.​23

FThus opinion had made the same event useful for the one, as it makes a coin pass current,​24 but useless and harmful to the other.

3 1   [link to original Greek text] Assume that exile is a calamity, as the multitude declare in speech and song. So too, many foods are bitter and pungent and irritate the taste; but by combining with them certain sweet and pleasant ingredients we get rid of the disagreeable savour. There are colours too, painful to the sight, and when confronted with them our vision is blurred and dazzled by their harshness and unrelieved intensity.​25 600Now if we have found that we could remedy this inconvenience by mingling shadow with them or turning our eyes aside and resting them upon something of a greenish and pleasant shade,​26 the same can be done with misfortunes as well: they can be blended​27 with whatever is useful and comforting in your present circumstances: wealth, friends, freedom  p525 from politics, and lack of none of the necessities of life.​28 For I fancy that there are not many Sardians who would not prefer your circumstances,​29 even with exile thrown in, and be content to live on such terms in a foreign land, rather than, like snails, which are of a piece with their shells Bbut enjoy no other blessing, maintain a painless connexion with their homes.​30 4 1 As, then, in the comedy a character who is urging an unfortunate friend to take heart and make a stand against Fortune, when asked, "How?" replies, "like a philosopher," so let us too make a stand against her by playing the philosopher worthily. But how are we to face

Zeus when he pours down rain? And how the North Wind?​31

Why, we look for a fire, a bath-house, a cloak, a roof: in a rainstorm we do not sit idle or lament. You too, then, are as able as any man to revive this chilled portion of your life and restore it to warmth: you need no further resources; it is enough to use wisely those you have. CFor whereas the cupping-glasses32 of physicians, by drawing out of the body its most worthless elements, relieve and preserve the rest, lovers of gift and fault-finding, by constantly collecting and counting up what is worst in their lot, and by getting absorbed in their troubles, make even the most useful things in it useless for themselves at the moment when these would naturally afford the greatest help. For it is not Zeus, dear friend,  p527 Dthat sits by the "two urns" of Homer,​33 which stand in heaven "brimful," the one of good, the other of evil "dooms," dispensing them, releasing to some a gentle and well-tempered flow, to others, an undiluted stream of misery; rather, it is ourselves: the wise among us, by drawing from the good and pouring it upon the bad, make their lives more pleasant and potable;​34 whereas in the multitude, as in filters, the worst remains and adheres as the better flows away and vanishes.

5 1   [link to original Greek text] If, therefore, we suffer some real and truly painful calamity, we must summon cheerfulness and peace of spirit by drawing upon the store of good still left us, using our own resources to smooth out the roughness of what comes from outside ourselves but with things which have no evil in their nature, and whose painfulness is wholly and entirely a figment of unfounded opinion, Ewe must act as we do with little children who are frightened by masks:​35 by bringing the masks close and putting them into their hands and turning them about we accustom the child to make light of them; so, by coming to close quarters with these things and applying to them the firm pressure of reason, we must expose their unsoundness, their hollowness, and their theatrical imposture.

[link to original Greek text] Such is your present removal from what you take to be your native land. For by nature there is no such thing as a native land, any more than there is by nature a house or farm or forge or surgery, as Ariston​36 said; but in each case the thing becomes so, or rather  p529 is so named and called, with reference to the occupant and user. FFor man, as Plato​37 says, is "no earthly" or immovable "plant," but a "celestial" one, — the head, like a root, keeping the body erect — inverted to point to heaven.​38 Thus Heracles spoke well when he said

an Argive I

Or Theban, for I boast no single exist;

There is no fort in Greece but is my country;​39

whereas the saying of Socrates is still better, that he was no Athenian or Greek, but a "Cosmian"​40 (as one might say "Rhodian" or "Corinthian"), 601because he did not shut himself up within Sunium and Taenarus and the Ceraunian mountains.41

Seest thou yon boundless aether overhead

That holds the earth within its soft embrace?​42

[link to original Greek text] This is the boundary of our native land, and here no one is either exile or foreigner or alien; here are the same fire, water, and air; the same magistrates and procurators and chancellors — Sun, Moon, and Morning Star; the same laws for all, decreed by one commandment and one sovereignty, the summer solstice, the winter solstice, the equinox, Bthe Pleiades, Arcturus, the seasons of sowing, the seasons of planting;​43 here one king and ruler, "God, holding the  p531 beginning, middle, and end of the universe, proceeds directly, as is his nature, in his circuit; upon him follows Justice, who visits with punishment those that fall short of the divine law,"​44 the justice which all of us by nature observe toward all men as our fellow-citizens.45

6 1   [link to original Greek text] That you do not live in Sardis is nothing; neither do all Athenians live in Collytus, all Corinthians in Craneion, all Laconians in Pitanê. Are those Athenians foreigners and men without a country who removed from Melitê to the region of Diomeia, where they observe both the month Metageitnion and a festival, "the Metageitnia,"​46 named for their migration, Caccepting this change of neighbours in a serene and joyful spirit, and remaining content with their condition? You would not say so. What part, then, of the inhabited world, or of the whole earth, is remote from another, when astronomers teach that in comparison to the universe the earth is a mere point, without extension?​47 But we, when like ants or bees we have been driven out of one anthill or beehive, are dismayed and feel strange, possessing neither the knowledge nor the instruction that would teach us to take and consider the whole world to be  p533 our own, as indeed it is. Yet we laugh at the stupidity of the man who asserts that at Athens there is a better moon than at Corinth, although we are in a sense in the same case as he, when, on coming to a foreign land, we fail to recognize the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, as though they were distinct and different from those familiar to us. DFor nature leaves us free and untrammelled; it is we who bind ourselves, confine ourselves, immure ourselves, herd ourselves into cramped and sordid quarters.​48 And then we scoff at the Persian kings, if in truth, by drinking no water but that of the Choaspes,​49 they turn the rest of the inhabited world for themselves into a waterless waste; but when we move to other lands, in our attachment to the Cephisus and our longing for the Eurotas or Taÿgetus or Parnassus, we make the inhabited world empty of cities for ourselves and unfit for habitation.

7 1   [link to original Greek text] The Egyptians indeed, who because of some outbreak of anger and severity on the part of their king, Ewere migrating to Ethiopia, replied to those who entreated them to return to their children and wives by pointing with Cynic licence to their private parts and remarking that they would be at no loss for either marriage or children so long as they had these with them.​50 One can, however, with greater decency and decorum, say that wherever a man happens to find a moderate provision for his livelihood,​51 there that man lacks neither city nor hearth  p535 nor is an alien. Only he must also have good sense and reason, Fas a skipper needs an anchor that he may moor in any haven and make use of it. For while loss of wealth cannot easily and quickly be repaired, every city at once becomes a native city to the man who has learned to make use of it and has roots which can live and thrive everywhere and take hold in any region, roots such as Themistocles and Demetrius of Phalerum had. For Demetrius was after his banishment first among the friends of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and not only lived in plenty himself, but even used to send largesse to the Athenians; 602while Themistocles, when royally maintained by the King's bounty, is reported to have said to his wife and children: "It would have been our undoing not to have been undone."​52 For this reason, to the one who remarked: "The Sinopians condemned you to banishment from Pontus," Diogenes the Cynic replied: "But I condemned them to stay there,"​53 —

Out where meet the shore

The breakers of the Inhospitable Sea.​54

[link to original Greek text] Stratonicus​55 asked his host in Seriphos what crime was punished there with banishment; when told that persons guilty of fraud were expelled, he said: "Then why not commit fraud and escape from this confinement?" — Bwhere the comic poet​56 says that  p537 the figs are gathered in with slings, and remarks that the island is well provided with every incommodity.

8 1   [link to original Greek text] Indeed, if you lay aside unfounded opinion and consider the truth, the man who has a single city is a stranger and an alien to all the rest; for it is felt he can neither in decency nor in justice forsake his own city to inhabit another:

Your lot is Sparta: look to Sparta then,​57

whether it be obscure, or unhealthy, or a prey to faction and turbulence. But Fortune grants possession of what city he pleases to the man she has deprived of his own. For that excellent precept of the Pythagoreans, C"choose the best life, and familiarity will make it pleasant,"​58 is here too wise and useful: "choose the best and most pleasant city, and time will make of it your native land" — a native land that does not distract you, is not importunate, does not command: "pay a special levy," "go on an embassy to Rome," "entertain the governor," "undertake a public service at your own expense." For if a person in his senses and not utterly infatuated bears this in mind, he will choose, if exiled, to live even on an island, Gyaros or Cinaros,

DRocky, unfit for cornº or vine or tree,​59

not downcast or lamenting or uttering the words of  p539 the women in Simonides60

The clamour of the blue salt sea

Tossing about me, hems me in,

but he will rather reason as Philip did, who said, on being thrown in wrestling, as he turned about and saw the imprint of his body: "Good God! How small a portion of the earth we hold by nature, yet we covet the whole world!"

9 1   [link to original Greek text] You have, I think, seen Naxos, if not, Hyria, which is not far from here;​61 yet Naxos had room for Ephialtes and Otus;​62 Hyria was the habitation of Orion.​63 When Alcmaeon was fleeing before the Eumenides, he settled, Eas poets tell, on newly hardened silt built up by the Acheloüs;​64 but my conjecture is that he too, fleeing from the tumults, factions, and fiendish legal blackmail of his countrymen, chose to dwell on a small plot unharassed and in peace. Tiberius Caesar passed the last seven years of his life at Capri; and the ruling part of the inhabited world, as if gathered up into a heart,​65 made  p541 not the slightest change in its abode for all that time. Yet in his case the cares of state, pouring in upon him and brought in from everywhere, made the island repose not unmixed and not free from storms; Fwhereas the man who finds that by disembarking on a small island he can be rid of no small troubles, is piti­ful indeed if he does not recite to himself the words of Pindar​66 and often repeat them as a spell:67

Forgo, my heart, the cypress;

Forgo the contested land;

To me but little earth is given, where grows the oak;

But to my lot has fallen no sorrow, no discord.

or commands from the governor or ministrations to the needs of countrymen and public services that are difficult to decline. 10 1 For when Callimachus​68 is applauded for saying,

Use not a Persian rope to measure art,

are we to measure felicity by "ropes" and parasangs, 603and if we dwell on an island of two hundred stades' circumference, and not, like Sicily, four days' sail in circuit,​69 are we to torment ourselves and lament our wretched plight? For what has breadth of land to  p543 do with the life free from pain? Have you not heard the words of Tantalus in the tragedy? He says,

The field I sow is twelve days' journey long,

The Berecynthian land​70

and then says a little later:

My fate, while reaching upward to the skies,

Falls to the earth, and speaks these words to me:

Learn not to honour human beings too much.​71

Nausithoüs, by leaving "the broad land of Hypereia"​72 because the Cyclopes were its neighbours, moving to an island B"far from industrious men,"​73 and dwelling apart from human traffic "far off in the stormy seas,"​74 provided his countrymen with the most pleasant of lives. It was first the children of Minos, and later the children of Codrus and Neileus, that settled the Cyclades, where at present the thoughtless exiles fancy they are punished. Yet what island of exile is not more spacious than the district of Scillus, where Xenophon after his campaign lived to see a "comfortable old age"?​75 The Academy, a little plot of ground bought for three thousand drachmas, was the dwelling of Plato and Xenocrates  p545 and Polemon, who taught and spent their lives there, Cexcept for the one day every year when Xenocrates went down to the city for the new tragedies at the Dionysia, and graced the festival, as people said. Theocritus​76 of Chios went so far as to abuse Aristotle, because he had conceived a taste for the style of living at the court of Philip and Alexander, and

preferred to Academe

A dwelling in the flow of Slime, —

there being a river near Pella which the Macedonians call Borborus.​77 Homer, who praises the islands and recommends them to us as though by design —

To Lemnos came she, town of godlike Thoas,​78

and

DAll that Lesbos bounds toward the sea,

Seat of the blest,​79

and

Taking steep Scyros, fortress of Enyeus,​80

and

Men from Dulichium and the sacred isles

Echinae, facing Elis over the sea —​81

also says that of famous men Aeolus the dearest to the gods, Odysseus the wisest, Ajax the bravest, and Alcinoüs the most hospitable, dwelt on islands.

11 1  [link to original Greek text] Zeno indeed, when he learned that his only remaining ship had been engulfed with its cargo by  p547 the sea, exclaimed: "Well done, Fortune! thus to confine me to a threadbare cloak" and a philosopher's life;​82 Ewhile a man not wholly infatuated or mad for the mob would not, I think, on being confined to an island, reproach Fortune, but would commend her for taking away from him all his restlessness and aimless roving, wanderings in foreign lands and perils at sea and tumults in the market place, and giving him a life that was settled, leisurely, undistracted, and truly his own, describing with centre and radius a circle containing the necessities that meet his needs.​83 For what island is there that does not afford a house, a walk, a bath, fish and hares for those who wish to indulge in hunting and sport? And best of all, the quiet for which others thirst, you can repeatedly enjoy. FBut at home, as men play at draughts and retire from the public eye, informers and busybodies track them down and hunt them out of their suburban estates and parks and bring them back by force to the market place and court; whereas it is not the persons who plague us, who come to beg or borrow money, to entreat us to go surety for them or help in canvassing an election, 604that sail to an island, it is the best of our connexions and intimates that do so out of friendship and affection, while the rest of life, if one desires leisure and has learned to use it, is left inviolate and sacred. He that calls those persons happy who run about in the world outside and use up most of their lives at inns and ferry-stations is like the man who fancies that the planets enjoy greater  p549 felicity than the fixed stars. And yet each planet, revolving in a single sphere, as on an island, preserves its station; for "the Sun​84 will not transgress his bounds," says Heracleitus;​85 "else the Erinyes, ministers of Justice, will find him out."

12 1   [link to original Greek text] BBut, my dear friend, let us address the preceding remarks and the like and repeat them as a spell to those others who have been banished to an island and are cut off from the rest of the world by

The grey salt sea, that bars the way to many

Against their will;​86

but for you, to whom one solitary spot is not appointed, but forbidden, the exclusion from one city is the freedom to choose from all. Further, set off against the consideration "I do not hold office or sit in the council or preside at games" the other consideration: "I am not involved in faction; I am not exhausting my fortune; I wait upon no governor; I care not now who has obtained the province, whom he is quick to anger or in other ways oppressive." CBut we are like Archilochus.​87 As he, over­looking the fruitful fields and vineyards of Thasos, because of its steep and rugged surface maligned it, saying

This island, like the backbone of an ass,

Stands up beneath its cover of wild wood,

so we, intent upon one part of exile, lack of fame,  p551 overlook its lack of politics, its leisure, and its freedom. Yet the kings of the Persians were called happy for spending the winter in Babylon, the summer in Media, and the most pleasant part of the spring in Susa.​88 Surely the exile too is free to sojourn in Eleusis during the Mysteries, to keep holiday in the city​89 at the Dionysia, and to visit Delphi for the Pythian and Corinth for the Isthmian games, if he is fond of spectacles; Dif not, he has at his command leisure, walking, reading, undisturbed sleep, and what Diogenes expressed when he said: "Aristotle lunches at Philip's pleasure, Diogenes at his own,"​90 since no politics or magistrate or governor disrupts the customary tenor of his life.

13 1   [link to original Greek text] On this account you will find that few men of the greatest good sense and wisdom have been buried in their own country,​91 and that most of them, under compulsion from no one, weighed anchor of their own accord and found a new haven for their lives, removing some to Athens, some from Athens. For who has pronounced such an encomium on his native land as Euripides?

Where, first, the people are no immigrants

EBut native to the soil: all other cities,

Disrupted once, as in the game, have been

 p553  Pieced out by importation from abroad,​92

If, madam, you permit a passing boast,

The sky above our land is temperate,

Where neither comes excess of heat nor cold,

And all the fairest fruits of Greece and Asia

With Africa as bait entice we hither.​93

[link to original Greek text] Yet the writer of these lines went off to Macedonia and spent his remaining years at the court of Archelaüs. You have doubtless also heard this little poem:

FThe Athenian, Aeschylus, Euphorion's son,

This grave conceals in Gela's fields of corn.​94

For he also sailed away to Sicily, as Simonides did before him. The statement "This is the setting forth of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus"​95 is altered by many to read "Herodotus of Thurii," as the author migrated to Thurii and joined in the settlement of that colony. 605Take that spirit of poetry, holy and inspired,

Who glorified the Phrygian fray,​96

Homer: what else has made many cities contend  p555 for him, but the fact that he eulogizes no single one? So too the honours of Zeus Xenios​97 are numerous and great.

14 1   [link to original Greek text] If it is objected that these men went in quest of fame and honours, go to the wise men and to the schools and resorts of wisdom at Athens; pass in review those in the Lyceum, in the Academy; the Porch, the Palladium,​98 the Odeum.​99 If it is the Peripatetic school you favour and admire most, BAristotle was from Stageira, Theophrastus from Eresus, Straton from Lampsacus, Glycon​100 from the Troad, Ariston from Ceos, Critolaüs from Phaselis; if the Stoic, Zeno was from Citium, Cleanthes from Assos, Chrysippus from Soli, Diogenes from Babylon, Antipater from Tarsus, and the Athenian Archedemus removed to the country of the Parthians and left a Stoic succession at Babylon. Who, then, pursued these men? No one; it was they who pursued peace, which at home is hardly the portion of those who have any fame or power, and thus, while teaching the rest of their doctrines by what they said, teach us this lesson by what they did. So too at present those men who are of most approved and surpassing merit live abroad, not forced to depart, but departing of themselves, and not put to flight, Cbut themselves fleeing the cares, distractions, and press of business that are the product of their native lands.​101 Indeed the  p557 Muses, it appears, called exile to their aid in perfecting for the ancients the finest and most esteemed of their writings. "Thucydides of Athens composed the history of the war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians"​102 in Thrace at Scaptê Hylê; Xenophon wrote at Scillus in Elis, Philistus in Epeirus, Timaeus of Tauromenium at Athens, DAndrotion of Athens at Megara, and the poet Bacchylides in the Peloponnese. All these and many more, when driven from their country, did not despair or lie prostrate in grief, but put their native abilities to use, accepting their exile as a provision granted by Fortune for this end, an exile that has made them everywhere remembered even in death; while of those who banished them and triumphed over them in the struggle of factions not one enjoys at present the slightest recognition.

15 1   [link to original Greek text] He, therefore, who thinks that loss of fame is attendant upon exile is ridiculous.​103 What nonsense! Is Diogenes lacking in fame? Why, Alexander, seeing him sitting in the sun, stopped to ask whether he wanted anything; and when Diogenes merely requested him to stand a bit out of his light,​104 Ethe king, struck with such high spirit, said to his friends: "Were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes."​105 Was Camillus deprived of fame when he was banished from Rome, of which he is now acclaimed the second founder?​106 Indeed Themistocles after his banishment did not lose his fame among the Greeks, but won new fame among the barbarians;​107 and no one  p559 is so indifferent to fame or so ignoble that he would rather have been Leobotes,​108 who brought the indictment, than Themistocles, who was condemned to exile, Clodius the banisher than Cicero the banished, For Aristophon, who made the accusation, than Timotheüs, who withdrew from his native land.

16 1   [link to original Greek text] But since many are stirred by the words of Euripides,​109 who is thought to arraign exile very forcibly, let us see what he has to say on the several counts of his indictment, as he presents them in the form of question and answer:

Joc. What is the loss of country? A great ill?

Pol. Surpassing great; no words can do it justice.

Joc. What is it like? What ills beset the banished?

Pol. One greater than the rest: speech is not free.

Joc. That is a slave's part — not to speak one's mind.

606Pol. The folly of the mighty must be borne.

[link to original Greek text] These initial assumptions are wrong and untrue. In the first place it is not a slave's part "not to speak one's mind," but that of a man of sense on occasions and in matters that demand silence and restraint of speech, as Euripides​110 himself has elsewhere put it better:

Silence in season, speech where speech is safe.

[link to original Greek text] In the next place we are compelled to bear "the folly of the mighty" no less at home than in exile; indeed, those who remain behind are often in even greater terror of men who wield unjust power in cities through chicane or violence than those who  p561 have taken their departure.​111 BBut the last and greatest absurdity is that banishment should deprive the exile of free speech: it is astonishing if Theodorus​112 was without free speech, the man who, when King Lysimachus said to him: "Did your country cast out a man of your qualities?" replied: "Yes I was too much for it, as Dionysus was for Semelê."​113 And when the king showed him Telesphorus​114 in a cage, his eyes gouged out, and said: "To this plight I bring those who injure me," Theodorus replied: "What cares Theodorus whether he rots above the ground or under it?"​115 CAnd did Diogenes lack freedom of speech — Diogenes who appeared at the camp of Philip as the king was advancing to join battle with the Greeks, was brought before him as a spy, and answered that he had come to spy indeed — on Philip's insatiable greed and folly in coming to stake on the cast of the dice in a few decisive moments both his empire and his person?​116 Did Hannibal the Carthaginian mince his words to Antiochus, an exile to a king, on that occasion when he urged him to  p563 seize a favourable chance to attack the enemy, and when the king resorted to sacrifice and said that the entrails opposed such a course, Hannibal rebuked him with the words: "You defer to a piece of meat, and not a man of sense"?​117 Nay, exile does not even destroy freedom of speech in geometers and grammarians, when they converse about the subjects they know and have been taught; Dhowever, then, could exile destroy it in good and worthy men?​118 It is meanness of spirit that everywhere "stops up the voice, ties the tongue, chokes, imposes silence."119

[link to original Greek text] What are we to say of the next words of Euripides?120

'Tis said that exiles live upon their hopes.

Their eyes hold promise, but they tarry ever.

This too is rather a charge against stupidity than against exile.​121 For it is not those who have learned and know how to put the present to good use, but those who are ever hanging upon the future and longing for what they do not have, that are tossed about on hope as on a raft, Ethough they never go beyond the city wall.

Did not your father's friends and hosts avail you?

Prosper: your friends are naught when trouble comes.

Nor yet did noble lineage raise you high?

To have not is a curse: birth would not feed me.​122

 p565  [link to original Greek text] These words of Polyneices now smack of ingratitude, when he charges noble birth with depriving him of honours and banishment with robbing him of friends; for he, an exile, won a princess in marriage by his noble birth, and when he took the field had that great and power­ful alliance of friends to defend him, Fas he himself admits a few lines later:

And many Danaan chiefs and Mycenaean

Are here to do me kindness — sorry kindness,

But sorry though it be, I need it sore.​123

[link to original Greek text] In the same vein are his mother's words, when she laments:

But I have lighted

No ritual torch to celebrate thy nuptials;

No hymeneal pride of soft ablution

Attended this alliance of Hismenus.​124

She should have rejoiced and been content when she learned that her son dwelt in so great a palace; instead, bewailing the unlit torch and Hismenus, who had provided no ablution, 607as though in Argos bridegrooms had neither water nor fire, she imputes to exile the miseries arising from infatuation and stupidity.

17 1   [link to original Greek text] But "exile" is a term of reproach.​125 Yes, among fools, who make terms of abuse of  p567 "pauper," "bald," "short," and indeed "foreigner" and "immigrant." But those who are not carried away by such considerations admire good men, even if they are poor or foreigners or exiles. Nay, do we not observe that like the Parthenon and the Eleusinium, so the Theseum is saluted with reverence by all? Yet Theseus was banished from Athens, though it is because of him that Athens is now inhabited; and that city was lost to him which he did not take possession of, but himself created. BWhat glory remains to Eleusis, if we are to be ashamed of Eumolpus, who, a migrant from Thrace, initiated and still initiates the Greeks into the mysteries? Whose son was Codrus, who became king? Was it not of Melanthus, an exile from Messenê? Do you not commend Antisthenes' retort to the man who remarked, "Your mother is a Phrygian": "So too is the Mother of the Gods"?​126 Why then do not you, when "exile" is cast in your teeth, make a similar reply: "So too the father of Heracles the victorious was an exile, so too the grandsire​127 of Dionysus, when sent out to find Europa, like her, did not return, though 'Phoenician born,' Cbut by coming to Thebes expatriated his 'descendant,'128

 p569  Euhius Dionysus,

Rouser of women,

Him that is adored in frenzy"?​129

[link to original Greek text] Now as to the matters at which Aeschylus​130 hinted darkly when he said

And pure Apollo, god exiled from heaven

"let my lips" in the words of Herodotus​131 "be sealed"; Empedocles,​132 however, when beginning the presentation of his philosophy, says by way of prelude:

A law there is, an oracle of Doom,

Of old enacted by the assembled gods,

That if a Daemon — such as live for ages —

Defile himself with foul and sinful murder,

He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam

Far from the Blest: such is the path I tread,

DI too a wanderer and exile from heaven,

indicating that not he himself merely, but all of us, beginning with himself, are sojourners here and strangers and exiles. "For," he says, "no commingling of blood or breath, O mortals, gave our souls their being and beginning; it is the body, earth-born and mortal, that has been fashioned out of these,"​133 and as the soul has come hither from elsewhere,  p571 he euphemistically calls birth a "journey,​134 using the mildest of terms. But it is truest to say that the soul is an exile and a wanderer, driven forth by divine decrees and laws; and then, as on an island buffeted by the seas, imprisoned within the body E"like an oyster in its shell," as Plato​135 says, because it does not remember or recall

What honour and what high felicity​136

it has left, not leaving Sardis for Athens or Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but Heaven and the Moon for earth and life on earth, if it shifts but a short distance here from one spot to another, it is resent­ful and feels strange, drooping like a base-born plant.​137 And yet for a plant one region is more favourable than another for thriving and growth, but from a man no place can take away happiness, Fas none can take away virtue or wisdom;​138 nay, Anaxagoras in prison was busied with squaring the circle,​139 and Socrates, when he drank the hemlock, engaged in philosophy and invited his companions to do the same, and was by them deemed happy;​140 whereas Phaëthon and Tantalus, as poets tell, when they had ascended to heaven, met with the most grievous disasters through their folly.141


The Loeb Editor's Notes:

1 Cf. G. Siefert, "De Aliquot Plutarchi Scriptorum Moralium Compositione atque Indole," in Commentationes Philo. Jenenses, vol. VI (1896), pp74‑89; Wilamowitz in Hermes, LXII (1927), p296.

2 It is evident that one of the milder forms of relegatio was used here: cf. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p967. Plutarch's suggestion (602B‑C) that his friend should choose a new city indicates that the exile was in perpetuum.

3 J. A. O. Larsen, Roman Greece (An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. IV, Baltimore, 1938), p438, note, gives the evidence for the reduction in size of Achaia under Hadrian or Antoninus Pius.

4 Seneca, Ad Helv. 6.4‑5; cf. Favorinus, περὶ φυγῆς col. viii.41 (G. Vitelli and M. Norsa, Il Papiro Vaticano Greco 11.1, Studi e Testi, 53, Vatican City, 1931).

5 The use of commonplaces in moral essays was a recognized procedure among ancient philosophers, as Cicero has indicated in the Tusc. Disput. III.34 (81): "Sunt enim certa quae de paupertate, certa quae de vita inhonorata et ingloria dici soleant; separatim certae scholae sunt de exilio, de interitu patriae, de servitute, de debilitate, de caecitate, de omni casu in quo nomen poni solet calamitatis. Haec Graeci in singulas scholas et in singulos libros dispertiunt; . . ."

6 A. Giesecke, De Philos. Vet. quae ad Exil. Spectant Sententiis (Leipzig, 1891).

7 Op. cit. p94.

8 B. Häsler, Favorin über die Verbannung (Bottrop i. W., 1935).

9 Cf. Seneca's similar statement about grief in Ad Marc. 19.1.

10 Contrast the attack on wealth as a good in Favorinus, col. xvi.31, and Seneca's argument that poverty is not an evil in Ad Helv. 10.

11 Cf. Seneca, Ad Helv. 8.6: "Quantum refert mea quid calcem?"

12 This is also a topic in Seneca, Ad Helv. 6.2 ff., and Favorinus, col. viii.41.

13 Cf. Musonius, p.48.6 ff. (ed. Hense); and Favorinus, col. xv.35.

14 See the notes on 606A ff.

15 Plutarchus de exilio, Angelo Barbaro interprete. Nuremberg, 1517.

16 The distress is due to unfounded opinion: cf. 600D‑E, infra.

17 From the Epitrepontes of Menander: frag. 9 (vol. I, p44 Körte; cf. Mor. 475B.

18 Cf.  Dio Cassius, XXXVIII.23.3.

19 Cf. Mor. 610B‑C.

20 Cf. Mor. 475B and Dion Cass., XXXVIII.23.4.

21 Euripides, Phoenissae, 388 f.; quoted 605F, infra.

22 The Greek name Alcman is supposed to have replaced the poet's original Lydian name.

23 Alexander Aetolus, frag. 9 in Collectanea Alexandrina (ed. J. U. Powell).

24 Cf. Mor. 406B.

25 A favourite analogy with Plutarch: cf. Mor. 469A with the note in the L. C. L.

26 Cf. Mor. 854B‑C.

27 Cf. Mor. 610E.

28 Cf. Mor. 469A.

29 Cf. Mor. 611B and Boëthius, Philos. Cons. II.4.17.

30 Cf. Mor. 611B.

31 Kock, C. A. F. III, Adespota, 118.

32 For the analogy of the cupping-glass cf. Mor. 469B and 518B.

33 Il. XXIV.527‑532 as quoted and paraphrased by Plato, Republic, 379D: the version of the MSS. of Homer is different. The Platonic version is quoted in Mor. 24B, 369C and 473B (where see the notes in the L. C. L.); the Homeric version is quoted with approval in the Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (Mor. 105C).

34 Cf. Mor. 469C and 610F.

35 Cf. Arrian, Epict. II.1.15.

36 Cf. Stoicorum Vet. Frag. I.371, p85 (ed. von Arnim).

37 Timaeus, 90A; cf. Mor. 400B.

38 For the notion that the upper parts of plants are "down" and the lower parts "up" (implied in Plato, Timaeus, 90A‑B) cf. Aristotle, De AnimaII.4 (416 A2‑5), De Part. An. IV.10 (686 B34 f.), De Inc. An. 4 (705 A26‑B 8).

39 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Adespota, 392, imitated by Crates (Frag. 15, Diels, Poetarum Phil. Frag. p222).

40 Cf. Cicero, Tusc. Disput. V.37 (108); Musonius, p42.1‑2 (ed. Hense); Arrian, Epict. I.9.1.

41 The limits of Greece to the east, south, and north: cf. Life of Phocion, chap. xxix.4 (745F).

42 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 941.1‑2; also quoted in Mor. 780D, 919B.

43 The civil months differed in Greece from city to city.

44 Plato, Laws, 715E‑716A; quoted Mor. 781F, 1124F.

45 For the notion that the whole world is our country cf. Mor. 329C; Democritus (Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, II, p194.16 f., Democritus, 247); Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 145; Seneca, Ad Helv. 9.7, Ep. XXVIII.4; Arrian, Epict. III.24.66; Favorinus, col. ix.23. For the whole topic cf. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, III.25 p203, note 5, and W. W. Tarn, "Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind," in the Proceedings of the British Academy, XIX (1933).

46 Metageitnios means "of the change of neighbours." Cf. L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932), p202.

47 Cf. Aristarchus, p352.5 (ed. Heath; cf. pp308‑310); Geminus, 16, p176.9 f. (ed. Manitius); Cicero, Tusc. Disput. I.7 (40); Seneca, Ad Marc. 21.2; Theo Smyrnaeus, pp120, 128 f. (ed. Hiller); Ptolemy, Syntaxis Mathematica, I.6, p20.5 ff. (ed. Heiberg); Cleomedes, I.11, p102.22 ff. (ed. Ziegler); Chalcidius, chap. lxiv, p132.9 f. (ed. Wrobel).

48 Cf. Teles, p23.3 f. (ed. Hense); Arrian, Epict. I.25.28.

49 Cf. Herodotus, I.188.

50 Cf. Herodotus, II.30; Diodorus, I.67.º Plutarch, perhaps intentionally, represents the Egyptians as migrating because of their king's "anger and severity"; in Herodotus and Diodorus they migrate from resentment at being slighted by him.

51 Cf. Musonius, p44.16 (ed. Hense).

52 Cf. Mor. 185F and the note; Teles, p22.14 f. (ed. Hense); Aristeides, Or. XX.9, vol. II, p19 (ed. Keil).

53 Cf. Diogenes Laert. VI.49.

54 Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 253.

Thayer's Note: More practically, with that word ἀξένος (axenos = inhospitable), Diogenes is reminding those he left back home, clinging to Pontus, that the place is not that great; as everyone knew, the Pontus (Euxinos) — the Greek name for the Black Sea — had originally been the Pontus Axinos: the Inhospitable Sea.

55 A celebrated Athenian citharoedus and wit of the fourth century.

56 Kock, C. A. F., Adespota, 812; perhaps from the Seriphioi of Cratinus; cf. Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. IV, p672, frag. com. anon. CCXCV c.

57 From the Telephus of Euripides: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 723; cf. Mor. 472D and note.

58 Cf. Mor. 123C and 466F, and the Gnomologium Vaticanum, 461 (ed. Sternbach, Wiener Stud. XI, 1889, pp209 f.) with the parallels noted there.

59 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Adespota, 393; Kock, C. A. F., Adespota, 1238.

60 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec., Simonides, 51; Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr. II.28.

61 Plutarch is doubtless writing from Chaeroneia.

62 These are the Aloadae, who when nine years old were nine cubits broad and nine fathoms high: cf. Homer, Od. XI.305‑310. For their stay at Naxos cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes, IV.88 f., and Diodorus, V.52.

63 Orion was yet huger than the Aloadae (cf. Homer, Od. XI.309 f.); for his birth at Hyria cf. Strabo, IX.2.12 (p404).

64 Eriphylê, the wife of Amphiaraüs, was bribed by a necklace to betray her husband, who in consequence took part in the war of the Seven against Thebes, and disappeared from among the living, but not until he had ordered their son, Alcmaeon, to avenge him. After slaying his mother Alcmaeon was told by the Delphic oracle that he could escape the furies by finding a country that had not existed when his mother uttered her dying curse. He found such a land in the alluvial deposits at the mouth of the Acheloüs. Cf. Thucydides, II.102; Pausanias, VIII.24.8‑9; and Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., pp379‑380.

65 An allusion to the Stoic doctrine that man's soul has a ruling part situated in the heart: cf. Stoicorum Vet. Frag. II.837‑839, p228 (ed. Von Arnim).

66 Paeans, IV.50 ff., partly preserved in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, V.841; cf. Sandys, Pindar, pp530 ff. in the L. C. L. The words are spoken by the hero Euxantius of Ceos; he had been offered land in Crete, but preferred to remain on his little island. The text and translation of this fragment are in places uncertain.

67 For chanting words over oneself as a spell cf. Plato, Phaedo, 114D, Republic, 608A, and Laws, 665C.

68 Callimachus, Aetia, Frag. 1.18 (ed. Pfeiffer, Oxford, 1949). Callimachus doubtless had in mind the largest of the figures given for the schoinos or "rope," sixty stades (Herodotus, II.6), which would be nearly seven miles.

69 Thucydides (VI.1.2) says that for a merchant vessel the voyage around the island required not much less than eight days; Ephorus (quoted by Strabo, VI.2.1, p266) says that the trip required five days and nights.

70 From the Niobê of Aeschylus: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Aesch. 158; Cf. Mor. 778B and note.

71 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Aesch. 159.

72 Homer, Od. VI.4.

73 Homer, Od. VI.8.

74 Homer, Od. VI.204 f.

75 Cf. Homer, Od. IV.210, XI.136, XIX.368, XXIII.283. After taking part in the expedition of the Ten Thousand, in the Spartan campaigns in Asia, and in the battle of Coroneia, Xenophon was exiled and settled at Scillus, a district in Elis south of Olympia. Here, according to Diogenes Laertius (II.52), he composed his histories: cf. 605Cinfra. By "campaign" Plutarch doubtless means the march of the Ten Thousand, as Xenophon's participation in this expedition was thought to have led to his banishment (cf. Diogenes Laert. II.58; Dio Chrysostom, Or. VIII.1; Pausanias, V.6.5.

76 Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr. I.13, p127.

77 That is, "Slime."

78 Il. XIV.230.

79 Il. XXIV.544.

80 Il. IX.668.

81 Il. II.625 f.

82 Cf. Stoicorum Vet. Frag. I.277, p64 (ed. von Arnim); Mor. 87A and notes; and the Gnomologium Vaticanum (ed. Sternbach, Wiener Stud. X, 1888, pp243 f.). Plutarch amplifies the quotation here, as in Mor. 467D.

83 Cf. Mor. 513C and note.

84 In Greek astronomy the sun is a planet.

85 Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, I, p172, Heracleitus, B 94; quoted also in Mor. 370D.

86 Homer, Il. XXI.59.

87 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. II, p389, Archilochus, 21; or Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr.3 fasc. 3, frag. 18.

88 Cf. Mor. 499A‑B and note, and Dio Chrysostom, Or. VI.1‑7.

89 That is, Athens.

90 Cf. Diogenes Laert. VI.45.

91 Plutarch here answers the complaint that the exile is not buried in his country: cf. Teles, p29.1 (ed. Hense) and Favorinus, col. xxix.1.

92 From the Erechtheus of Euripides: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 360.7‑10. There was a game in which a compact body of pieces was called a "city." Cf. Adam on Plato, Republic, 422E (Cambridge, 1902).

93 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 981. Plutarch, no doubt relying on his notes (cf. Mor. 464F), has here combined two different passages.

94 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. II, p241, Aeschylus, no. 4; or Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr. I.13, p78.

95 Herodotus, I.1. For the "change," which may be what Herodotus actually wrote, see Jacoby in D‑E, Suppl. II.205‑213, and J. E. Powell, The History of Herodotus (Cambridge, 1939), pp63 f.

96 Pindar, frag. 345 (ed. Snell).

97 That is, the god of strangers.

98 For Cleitomachus' lectures in the Palladium cf. S. Mekler, Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis, coll. xxiv.36, xxv.8, xxx.9.

99 Chrysippus is said to have taught in the Odeum; cf. Mor. 1033E; Diogenes Laert. VII.184, and Athenaeus, 336E.

100 More commonly known as Lycon: cf. Diogenes Laert. V.66.

101 Cf. Musonius, p43.8 ff. (ed. Hense).

102 Thucydides, I.1.

103 For the fame of exiles cf. Favorinus, col. iii.24 ff., where Diogenes, Heracles, and Odysseus are cited as examples.

104 Cf. Diogenes Laert. VI.38; Cicero, Tusc. Disput. V.32 (92).

105 Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xiv.2 (671D‑E), and Mor. 331E‑F and A; quoted Mor. 782A.

106 Cf. Life of Camillus, chap. I.1 (129B), and Livy, VII.1.10.

107 Cf. Dio Cassius, XXXVIII.26.3.

108 Cf. Life of Themistocles, chap. xxiii.1 (123C).

109 Phoenissae, 388‑393; cf. Musonius, p48.6 ff. (ed. Hense). Jocasta asks the questions, Polyneices answers.

110 From the Ino of Euripides: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 413.2; quoted also in Mor. 506C.

111 Cf. Musonius, p48.19 ff. (ed. Hense).

112 Theodorus of Cyrenê, surnamed "the atheist" or "the god," a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school, lived in the fourth and third centuries.

113 Cf. Diogenes Laert. II.102; Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 129 f.; Philodemus, On Death, col. xxxii.23 f. Semelê, when big with Dionysus, asked to see Zeus in his full glory; Zeus complied, and Semelê was consumed in flames. Zeus took the unborn child and sewed it in his thigh, and thus Dionysus was born a second time.

114 Cf. Athenaeus, 616C, and Seneca, De Ira, III.17.2‑4.

115 Cf. Mor. 499D with the note, and Stobaeus, vol. III, pp316 f. (ed. Hense).

116 Cf. Mor. 70C; Life of Demosthenes, chap. xx.3 (855B); Diogenes Laert. VI.43.

117 Cf. Cicero, De Div. II.24 (52), copied by Valerius Maximus, II.7, ext. 6. Here the king is Prusias, not Antiochus.

118 Cf. Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 48‑50. Teles (p21.2‑5 Hense) cites flute-players and actors — notorious migrants — as examples.

119 Demosthenes, Or. XIX (De Falsa Leg.).208 (p406); quoted also in Mor. 88C.

120 Phoenissae, 396‑397.

121 Cf. Musonius, p50.15 ff. (ed. Hense).

122 Euripides, Phoenissae, 402‑405.

123 Euripides, Phoenissae, 430‑432.

124 Euripides, Phoenissae, 344 f., 347 f. Hismenus was the river in Thebes from which the water for the bridegroom's ritual bath was taken. Jocasta appears to speak of the river as if it were a kinsman of the bridegroom and had thus become allied to the bride. Text and interpretation have both been disputed.

125 This charge is also presented and answered by Teles (p25.8‑10 Hense), Seneca, Ad Helv. 13.4 ff., and Favorinus, col. xxv.13 ff.

126 Cf. Diogenes Laert. VI.1. Plutarch calls Antisthenes' mother a Phrygian; Diogenes Laertius and Seneca (De Const. Sap. 18.5) call her a Thracian.

127 That is, Cadmus. For Cadmus as an exile held in honour cf. Teles, p28.4 (ed. Hense).

128 Adapted by Plutarch from the Phrixus of Euripides: Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 819.3:

Φοῖνιξ πεφυκώς, ἐκ δ’ ἀμείβεται γένος

Ἑλληνικόν

"Phoenician born, his race he did exchange

For Greek."

Plutarch uses the word genos ("race" in Euripides) in the sense of "descendant," and substitutes "expatriated" for "did exchange."

129 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec., Adespota, 131; quoted also in Mor. 389B and 671C.

130 Supplices, 214; quoted also in Mor. 417E.

131 II.171.1 and 2. The phrase is also used in Mor. 417C and 636E.

132 From the Καθαρμοί: cf. Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, I, pp357 ff., Empedocles, B 115.1, 3, 5, 6, 13. Cf. also Mor. 418E.

133 This is Plutarch's interpretation, not a direct quotation or paraphrase.

134 This is apparently Plutarch's interpretation of "that path is mine."

135 Phaedrus, 250C.

136 From Empedocles' Καθαρμοί: cf. Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, I p359, Empedocles, B 119.1.

137 Cf. Plato's description of man as a "celestial plant" quoted 600F, supra, and note.

138 Cf. Life of Alexander, chap. xii.2 (326B); Musonius, p42.6 (ed. Hense); Dio Cassius, XXXVIII.26.2; Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 150.

139 Cf. Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, II p14, Anaxagoras, A 38.

140 Cf. Mor. 499B and Plato, Phaedo, 58E.

141 Socrates and Phaëthon are also contrasted in Mor. 466E‑F.


[image ALT: Valid HTML 4.01.]

Page updated: 28 Aug 18